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Intel Unveils Atom Z6XX Smartphone Platform


Intel have just released an news about their smartphone and tablet platform previously known as Moorestown. The platform is a follow-on from the MID-focused platform, Menlow and includes power saving and power-boosting features that could see service in some very high-end smart devices. The processing unit is known as the Z6XX (assume there will be variants) and the control unit is known as MP20.

I’ve done some analysis of the news over at UMPCPortal but here’s a summary.

Collectively these new chips deliver significantly lower power including >50x reduction in idle power, >20x reduction in audio power, and 2-3x reductions across browsing and video scenarios all at the platform level when compared to Intel’s previous-generation product1. These power savings translate into >10 days of standby, up to 2 days of audio playback and 4-5 hours of browsing and video battery life. When combined with 1.5-3x higher compute performance, 2-4x richer graphics, >4x higher JavaScript performance, and support for full HD 1080p high-profile video decoding and 720p HD video recording, these low-power innovations bring a rich, PC-like visual experience to powerful handheld computers.

So you’ve got some new power-saving technology there that should allow devices to be built around a standard 1500mah battery but that’s not all.

These power management capabilities, when combined with IntelĀ® Burst Performance Technology for high-performance on demand, and Intel’s Bus Turbo Mode for high-bandwidth on demand, help to deliver industry leading performance and power efficiency across a range of handheld devices.

These ‘turbo’ features will take the platform to 1.5Ghz and there’ll even be a version that will boost to 1.9Ghz. That’s more than a netbook! So if you add the low-power idle features with the turbo modes you’ve got a platform that spans a wide range of uses. With MeeGo being developed alongside Moorestown and a wave of interest in ‘smart’ devices, Intel have timed it well.

The press release even mentions Android. We saw it back in Feb but it looks like it’s become a core part of the Moorestown strategy now.

Here’s the video of Android running on a Moorestown smartphone from MWC in Feb.

Additional info: What Moorestown Means for Consumers.

We’re with Intel at Computex next month (I’ve been invited to Computex through the Intel Insider program) where I’m sure we’ll hear about launch dates, devices and a whole lot more. Expect videos and hands-on!

Z6XX Press Kit

Is Tunnel Creek the new Consumer Handheld CPU from Intel? No. (Better Things Are Coming)


A few days ago I did some research and analysis on the new ‘Queensbay’ platform from Intel It’s a highly integrated 2-chip system comprising Tunnel Creek processing platform and I/O chip that takes the platform used on many current MIDs and UMPCs and optimizes it in a similar way that Pinetrail did for netbooks. Despite some improvements in size and graphics power and a hint that it might be capable of some cool consumer and media devices, it’s not the Apple A4 / Tegra 2 competitor that I’m guessing will get referenced in articles today. That job lies with Moorestown and I’ll tell you more about that later today on Carrypad. Update: Intel Moorestown article now available.

Tunnel Creek was formerly announced today. See Intel Press Release.
More detailed information has already been made available. See below.

Tunnel Creek integrates a lot of activity on one die and offers a doubling of GPU power, an increase in memory bus speed, an open PCIe bus Southbridge architecture that allows for third party chipsets, a SATA storage interface and a promise of a lower bill of materials. It is possible to build some nice little handhelds out of it and one could imagine interesting tablets with Nvidia Ion on board but later today, we’ll hear more about something that’s been build ground-up for handheld tablets, mids, smartphones, active remote controls and of course, the ‘iPad killers.’

I’ll write about Moorestown later today but for the time being, here are some schematics for Tunnel Creek; the first showing the differences between Menlow (I’m using a PC based on Menlow right now) and Tunnel Creek and the last slide showing Tunnel Creek vs Menlow in a mediaphone scenario.

quuensbay-1

tunnecreek-mediaphone

tunnelcreek-graphics

There are a couple of things there that I didn’t mention in my previous article. Number 1 hardware accelerated video ENCODE. 2) Audio DSP functions. This leads me to believe that Tunnel Creek is in fact a version of Lincroft, the processing unit used in the Moorestown platform. We’ll talk more about that later.

For the Intel IDF presentation on Tunnel Creek (from which the above slides were taken) see the IDF 2010 Beijing Content Catalogue and search for ‘Tunnel Creek’ (Unfortunately I can’t link direct as the catalogue generates one-time URLs.)

For a primer on Moorestown, see the links below. More detailed information on Moorestown architecture is expected from IDF later today.

Moorestown Digging a little deeper.

Intel’s Moorestown Platform. From Smartphone Through Smartbook and Beyond.

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